Unless there has been a polling fiasco that rivals the Great New Hampshire Primary Debacle Of 2008, Rand Paul will emerge tomorrow as the GOP nominee in Kentucky. This is an astonishing development: If I were to take the wayback machine to last summer to tell 2009 Sean Trende that Rand Paul was to be the GOP nominee, 2009 Sean Trende would probably have voluntarily committed himself to a mental hospital to get ahead of what appeared to be his forthcoming break with reality.
You see, the GOP got its favored candidate when Secretary of State Trey Grayson, one of two Republicans holding statewide office, declared for the seat of retiring Senator Jim Bunning. Ron Paul's son, Rand, later declared for the seat, and was seen as something of a gadfly.
Paul has turned out to be anything but a gadfly. He had three advantages over Grayson. First, he had access to his father's name and fundraising network. Although Ron Paul didn't win any primaries in 2008, he did raise tremendous amounts of money, and Rand has followed suit. Second, he was an anti-establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year. And finally, he was fortunate enough (or clever enough) to run for the Senate in the Year of the Tea Party. Indeed, if you run down Paul's issues list, you see a veritable cornucopia of Tea Party keywords: Bailouts, national defense, inflation, taxes, debt, liberty, sovereignty, the Fed, and so forth.
But what does this mean for the general election? Can Paul win?
It's difficult to assess the race immediately, because the Democrats have a very tight primary race of their own right now. Attorney General Jack Conway is taking on Lieutenant Governor Dan Mongiardo, who nearly upset incumbent Senator Jim Bunning in 2004.
The first glance at the race would nevertheless suggest that it would be an uphill battle for Paul. Kentucky is still a Democratic state at the state level, though its Democrats tend to be of the conservative, Southern variety. Paul is about the farthest thing from a Southern Democrat to come out of GOP politics since, well, his father. Paul's staunch fiscal conservatism and heterodox views on social issues (though he is pro-life) are the inverse of the typical socially-conservative-fiscally-populist views that typified the Southern Democracy. In some respects, Kentucky may be the worst state in the union in which to run as a libertarian Republican.
But the polling suggests otherwise. Despite enduring withering attacks from Grayson over the past three months, Paul leads Mongiardo and Conway. His leads aren't as large as Grayson's, but they range from the solid (against Democratic frontrunner Mongiardo) to the narrow (against Conway). More impressively, he hasn't trailed against either potential Democrat in any polling since last summer.
Moreover, while fiscal populism is frequently contradictory – anti-corporate and anti-government – in this year they are uniquely married together. Paul's anti-bailout message really goes to both strands of populism, and is tailor-made for Democrats who are wary of taxes, and who really don't like their tax dollars going to corporations.
Finally, for all of the obvious attacks on Paul's positions, he'll have a trump to play against his Democratic opponent that he can't unleash in the primary: “Sending [Mongiardo/Conway] to Washington is another Democratic vote for Barack Obama's agenda.” In a state where the President received 41% of the vote last November and currently suffers from a net -20 approval rating, it's hard to see a Democratic Senator headed for Washington.
A Rand Paul candidacy certainly makes the Kentucky Senate race interesting. But it would be a huge mistake to write it off.
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